Chapter 3: Chapter 2: The Island Cave's Lost Treasure
"You… you can't tell anyone about this you hear!"
Melanie had awaken from her slumber and was holding her backpack of books against her stomach tightly.
"Shit Shit Shit Shit!" She said pacing around the grass field we were on.
"My life is over, my life is over, my life is over. How am going to explain this to my parents and everyone else. They'll disown me for sure. I might as well never go back!"
She walked up to me with a slightly creepy smile on her face.
"Yes that's the plan! We'll stay on this island forever. This way I'll be able to carry this secret to my grave! Yeah… that should work."
"It's not that big of a deal…" I said sighing, "You realize that most girls your age are into this sort of stuff right."
"What really? You don't think I'm weird?"
"Well what's weird is that you risked your life for some BL and got us stuck on this island. I will say that might make your obsession a bit… unhealthy. But it's not really that uncommon you know."
"Ohhhhhhhh so are you saying you're into this kind of stuff too?" Melanie said leaning into my face. "Honestly I didn't think you'd be the type to swing that way! But if you are then…"
"No no no!" I said pushing her away, "I change my mind this hobby is extremely unhealthy for you."
Having no smart phone or watch on me, I couldn't tell the time but it must have been approximately 11am already. My stomach growled from not eating much the day before.
"More importantly, let's try and gather more food while we wait for the rescue team to come find us. It shouldn't take more than a day right?"
"I hope it does! I feel like Robinson Crusoe out here!"
"Right… you realize that guy got stranded on an island for 28 years right?"
"Yeah! It sure looked like he had a good time too."
"I think you missed the point of the story."
"No I didn't!"
As Melanie said that, she reached into her backpack and pulled out a book.
"Just look at this chapter!"
She flipped to a page of the book which turned out to be a comic book adaption of the story.
"Oh Master Crusoe, I know you rescued me but is it really alright if we do this?" Melanie began reading aloud.
"Don't worry Friday… I'll be gentle with you."
"Wait what the hell…"
I grabbed the book from Melanie's hands and looked again at the front cover.
"Melanie… this isn't even the real story. It's a knockoff BL Doujin."
"What… no. I swear this is the canon story."
"…"
"…"
"Let's just go catch some fish."
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"How… how do you catch these damn things?" I said trying my best to grab onto the fish from the water. Just like the day before however, it seemed I was completely inept when it came to basic survival skills.
"Oh that's easy!" Melanie said. "You just have to do a fast swipe."
She proceeded to do just that quickly thrusting her hand into the ocean and grabbing a fish. Despite my best efforts at imitating this, it appeared I could not do the same.
"What… what sort of voodoo magic is this?"
"I told you I'm a survival extraordinaire!" Melanie exclaimed proudly holding up her fish. As the day continued, I became more and more impressed at Melanie's seemingly natural survival abilities, and conversely, more and more discouraged by my own incompetence.
Melanie had managed to by herself catch multiple fish, identify multiple fruit trees, and start another fire with just small wood sticks at the place we had slept at yesterday. I was honestly quite thankful as I was able to eat the several fishes and fruits she had caught and gathered for us that day.
"Seriously, how are you able to do all of this if it's your first time?"
"I told you, I watch a lot of survival documentaries. They have loads of information on what to do in these kinds of situations. That's why they call me…"
She said doing the same pose as she did yesterday.
"A SURVVIIVAAAALLLLL EXTRAAAA…..AAAAA….AAAAA…"
And just like yesterday, Melanie suddenly fainted falling back onto the ground.
"Naireeeeeee"
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"What… what happened?"
It was already nighttime when Melanie woke up again.
"Oh, you're awake." I said as she got up. "You fainted again a couple hours ago."
"Oh yeah, that happens a lot actually."
As it turns out, despite her excellent knowledge on surviving in the wild, Melanie's actual physical stamina was quite lacking as apparently she had spent most of her life sheltered and in doors with her parents not allowing her to go many places.
"Yeah, they always told me the outside natural world was scary. I lived a pretty tough life to be honest."
"What did you do for fun then?"
"Mmmm… I'd say most of my time growing up I spent going to 5 star restaurants, yachting, and going between the various mansions we owned."
"Man... Mansions as in plural?"
"Yeah I think my parents own like 20 across different parts of the world. We'd go to all of them and meet with various important business people in each one."
"I… I see."
"Yeah honestly, I feel like I've lived a difficult life you know? It was soooooo boring. All I wanted to do was ditch it all and become a vagabond or something! That sounds a lot more fun."
"Right…"
"Apologize to the millions starving on the streets..." I thought internally.
"Anyway, a rescue team didn't come today either huh?" She said sitting down near the fire again and staring into the flames.
"Yeah, guess not," I said sitting down next to her.
It was another clear sky where the stars above could be seen clearly. I couldn't help but romanticize the scenario we were in especially with such a cute girl with me. It was very difficult to look at Melanie without blushing. We spent the rest of the night sharing stories of our respective and seemingly mundane ordinary lives. Well, I say mundane, but the life of what is considered ordinary for a rich girl certainly was different than my own. On the contrary however, to Melanie, the ordinary life that I had led was just as fascinating.
"That's amazing! So you would go camping with some of your friends in the mountains?"
"Yeah… the Appalachians aren't that far away. We'd rent a campsite and go all the time."
"Mmmmmmmmmmm." Melanie squirmed a bit in glee much to my confusion.
"Did you have a friend named Ennis?"
"What? No… I don't think I have any friends named Ennis. Why do you ask?"
"Were you and your friends cowboys?!?!?"
"What… no no why would you think that?"
"Wait that's the plot of a film I'm pretty sure. Bucket List?" I thought to myself, "Into the Wild? No… that doesn't seem right. Wait a minute…that's Brokeback Mountain isn't it?"
We talked for several more hours until we were both thoroughly exhausted. Finally, we decided to go to the spots we slept at yesterday.
"Whelp… guess we'll just have to wait until tomorrow." Melanie said turning over to her side.
"Good night Jack!"
"Good night Melan… wait what'd you call me?"
"Xaiver! Hehheh."
"That didn't sound remotely close to Xavier."
"Ahhhh you're hearing things. Good night Xavier!"
"Good Night Melanie…"
I breathed a sigh and drew another line on the same rock next to the one from yesterday.
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Unfortunately, for Melanie and I, the next day there were no signs of anyone coming to our rescue either.
Or the next…
Or the next…
Before we knew it, a whole week had passed with Melanie and I pretty much going through the same routine every day. Not wanting her to faint every time, I did the majority of the physical work during the day while Melanie strategized various tactics. This included hunting the various sea creatures such as turtles and crabs that were scattered throughout the beach. Somehow even with those creatures, Melanie had expert knowledge on them and knew exactly how to hunt them. At times I would have to give her a piggyback ride and she would point to exactly where to push down my hand to catch something.
"Okay, now aim your right hand exactly 2 feet to the right of that crab."
"What isn't that…"
"Hurry before it gets away!"
She kicked me on the abdominal.
"Oww… Okay okay." I said following the order
"NICE! We got it!"
To this day, it still surprises me how precise and competent Melanie was at these things. Nearly every movement she made me do correlated perfectly to an animal's movement. It was like she had some sort of future vision for animals.
"Just trust the Survival Extraooooooorddinaire."
For the most part Melanie and I stayed only on the parts of the island close to the beach not wanting to venture too far into the center of the island. Many trees covered our path and we didn't want to miss any signs of people coming to rescue us or stray too far from our main food sources by or in the sea.
"Have… have you been wearing that this whole time?" Melanie said pointing to my makeshift seaweed skirt one day.
"Yeah, it's not like I have many options here you know."
"No wonder you smell so bad!"
"…"
"…"
"You've been wearing the same swim suit too you know? You smell just as bad!"
Suddenly as we were talking, rain started to fall upon us for the first time on the island.
"Shit… what do we do now survival extraordinaire!?!?!"
"Uhh…" Melanie said as she covered herself with her backpack, "let's run towards the middle of the island. Maybe we'll be able to find a cave!"
"What… there's no way we'll be able to find a cave."
Of course, being the survival extraordinaire that she was, I was wrong again and we somehow conveniently stumbled upon a small cave as we walked further towards the center of the island. There we sat inside to dodge the rain for a bit.
"Urghh… my pants are all wet," I said, "Soo… scratchy. How long do you think this rain will last Melan… Melanie?"
As I turned to face her, Melanie had seemingly vanished from my sight.
"Melanie?"
"Over here!!!!!!"
"What? Where are you?"
I looked in every direction but couldn't see the survival extraordinaire. The cave itself was only about 10 feet in depth inward and made of mostly beige limestone. Pretty much every part of the cave should have been visible to me from my vantage point.
"Did you go outside Melanie?"
"No silly, I'm right here!"
Suddenly, the inside wall of the cave which was supposed to be the inner most part, began to break in two as a path between opened up with a smiling Melanie standing on the other side of the walls.
"Haha! Secretttttttt Tunnel."
"What the… how is that… you know what I'm not even going to ask."
"Come this way, I think this leads to somewhere interesting," Melanie said motioning me to follow her.
As I walked to her spot in between the walls, a secret tunnel path did indeed present itself in front of us. Along the walls of the tunnel, various fire torches hung that brought light to the path. I grabbed two of the torches and handed one to Melanie.
"This is pretty amazing, where do you think it leads to?"
"Heh heh!" Melanie giggled with joy, "we could find anything in here. But if my survival extraordinaire instincts are to be trusted, than this should lead to some sort of treasure left behind by pirates!"
"Huh…" I said doubtingly, "even for one of your predictions that seems like a bit of a stretch... ehhhhhhhhhh."
I jumped a bit in terror as before us lay several still clothed skeletons sitting up against the walls of the cave tunnel. It seemed several of them had wooden legs, eye patches, and bandanas that confirmed Melanie's theory of pirates. Being unfazed by the sight, Melanie simply squatted down next to one of the skeletons.
"Melanie what are you… Melanie!?!??!"
Melanie proceeded to simply grab the clothes off the skeleton next to her. After dusting it a bit, she put on the linen shirt and wool pants the skeleton had been wearing on herself. She then proceeded to take the eyepatch and bandana the skeleton had and put those on too.
"Arrrrrrr matey," she said putting her hands on her hips, "It be I, pirate Melanie."
"Are you sure you should be doing this? I feel like it's pretty disrespectful of you."
"Arrrrrrr the dead don't care either way matey. And as well, ye seaweed skirt be wet and falling apart."
I looked down at my seaweed skirt and it did appear due to the rain that it was starting to fall apart. Reluctantly, I picked up the cloths of one of the other skeletons and put them on as well.
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As we kept walking a bit further into the cave, more and more skeletons could be seen. Some had parts of their ribcages cracked. Others had small knives and various pieces of metal inside them indicating that perhaps some sort of combat had taken place. Finally, at the end of the tunnel, a massive pile of skeletons lay in front of a giant circular stone blocking further entrance.
"Alright Xavier matey, this be where yee tests yee strength. Go ahead and push that circular stone out of the way."
"What? I don't think I'm strong enough to do that."
"Yee might surprised and yee's own strength I say. Yee should try anyway! I smell treasure on the other side!"
Seeing as she was not likely to drop the matter and having already walked this far, I reluctantly went up to the circular stone and gave it a push. To my surprise, it rolled out of the way with great ease.
"Wow! Guess I'm stronger than I thought," I said even flexing a little bit proudly.
"Aye… and as well thee rock not be as sturdy as thee rock looks!" She said going up to the rock. She took her hand out and grabbed onto the rock pulling a piece apart from it.
"What… what? How is that possible?"
"It be soft limestone matey, I learn from textbooks."
"Right.."
As we walked past the rock, we entered a round room with torches surrounding the walls. Centered in the middle, true to Melanie's prediction, lay a single chest with a skeleton body kneeling and slumping its upper body on top of it.
"You were right! There was treasure here after all," I said excitedly going up to the treasure chest.
"Ayee…" Melanie said, "it seems many fell in search for the treasure. But here we find it at last."
I brushed the skeleton off of the chest. As I began lifting the top off of the chest which appeared to be unlocked, my heart pounded in anticipation.
"Oh boy… I hope it's gold bars! Or precious jewels? Or doubloons maybe?"
As I finally peeked inside however, I was quite disappointed to find only a simple book inside the chest. I picked up the book and the cover read, Male Tales of The Seven Seas by the Greatest Pirate Ana Oswald.
"What the hell is this…"
"Aye, tis must be of something worthy given the body count." Melanie said sitting down next to me. While I was disappointed, I couldn't really argue with what Melanie was saying either. Holding back my judgement, I nodded and opened up the cover onto the first page.
"Dear readers, I am writing this after being aboard the Queen Anne's revenge with Captain Blackbeard and Black Caeser," I read aloud, "Those that know me know I've told all the secrets of the pirates and where each one kept their treasure, or booty as they say. And I be doing this since my first journey with Captain Kidd. Read on if you would like to know all the pirate secrets."
"Well this seems kind of interesting at least." I said, "Not sure why people were willing to die for a book like this put I can see the appeal. These are some legendary pirates! Maybe we'll even find a treasure map or something."
"Aye, indeed they are," Melanie said. She then turned to the next page of the book.
As she did and we both saw simultaneously what showed on the next page, Melanie's eyes began to widen with joy as mine once again began to sink into a whole new level of disgust. Depicted on the next page was a rather graphic drawing of the legendary pirates Blackbeard and Black Caeser… making out. Next to it a caption read:
"The real treasure that Black Beard and Black Caeser found on their journey"
On the next page, a text that read like a raunchy teenage fanfiction of the pirates was displayed. Having lost a good bit of humanity that day, I simply got up and started walking out of the room back to the tunnel. As I did, Melanie laughed and put the book away into her backpack.
"I guess thee real treasure be the "friendship" they made along the way."
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